Ask a dozen Denver diners, and half will tell you that Frank Bonanno is the best chef in town.

He opened his flagship restaurant, Mizuna, in 2001 with then-partner Doug Fleischman, and it's been consistently rated near or at the top of just about every best-of list compiled since. (Bonanno also helms two other Denver restaurants, Luca D'Italia and Osteria Marco, the latter with partners Ryan Gaudin and Jean-Philippe Failyau.)

I've never reviewed Mizuna. And part of the arrangement I made with Bonanno was this: If we sit down for this interview, it means I never again review a Bonanno restaurant. My anonymity will have been breached, a deal-breaker on both sides.

That said, there's no doubt that Mizuna is one of Denver's premier dining experiences.

Frank Bonanno in the kitchen of his restaurant Luca D'Italia.
(Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

Intelligent cooking and warm service permeate the room, which has just had, as Bonanno puts it, a "face-lift": new floors, new woodwork, new finishes.

But Mizuna is also one of Denver's most expensive restaurants, a fact neither Bonanno nor his wife and partner, Jacqueline, shies away from. "Once you get a reputation for being expensive, you're never going to shake it," says Jacqueline, "So you might as well embrace it. Put out the very best product, and charge what it's worth."

Bonanno—confident, earnest, passionate and decisive—sat down with me for several hours on a recent afternoon to talk about his philosophy on food, his friendship with the now-deceased Fleischman and whether Denver really cuts it as a food town.

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Tucker Shaw: When did Mizuna open?

Frank Bonanno: March 2001.

That was a tough year.

Yeah. But we persevered. No matter what the conditions, we've always stayed our course. We've always thought that if we do what we do, and do it better than everyone else, we'll survive.

What is it that you do better than everyone else?

What we do is make everything as fresh and clean as we can. For every order. There's no steam table. Nothing is pre-prepared, other than chopping and blanching vegetables. That, to me, is pure cooking: putting out a product that's perfect every time.

Perfect?

You can't reach perfection, but you have to try for it on every dish. I love cooking. I love what I do. But it never stops. New floors. New paint. A charity event. Then service. I'm beat. Some nights I only sleep two hours.

That's not just cooking, that's running a business.

The restaurant business is all about "this is broken" or "this is going to cost a thousand dollars to fix." But I've worked in too many places where it's like, "Let's just get by." To me, no. If it's broken, we're getting something new.

Chef/owner Frank Bonanno plates a dish in the kitchen of Mizuna. At right is chef de cuisine Tony Clement.
(Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

But these days, how can you afford those things?

Because it's the right thing to do. You can't cut corners. Luca D'Italia looks nothing like it did when it opened five years ago. We've repainted it twice. We have a new bar. We replaced all the chairs. You think about chairs, they cost $200 a pop, 65-70 chairs, that's a huge expense. But it's what we needed to do.

What about human resources?

The newest guy here is 16 months in this kitchen. Tony Clement, my chef de cuisine, has been here for five years. If you love to cook, you want to come work for me because I will teach you the right way to braise. I will teach you to cook fish. You will get the skin crispy every time. When we opened Mizuna, I felt that if you could set it up where you had a guy that does nothing but meat, a guy that does nothing but fish, a guy on hot appetizers, a saucier, and two guys in garde-manger (cold dishes), it would work.

The old-school approach.

It is old-fashioned. But if you look in the great restaurants, like Daniel or the French Laundry, that's what they have. We wanted to do something that hadn't been done before in Denver.

Tell me about Doug Fleischman, your original partner who was killed in a car accident in 2003.

Doug and I were together for five years at Mel's, where I was the chef and he was the general manager. We had a tremendous relationship. We respected each other. He knew that he could come at 7:30 with 50 tickets hanging, and say "I need this for this table right now" and I'd stop whatever I was doing, because it was him asking. We had similar philosophies about how to run a restaurant.

You wanted to control your own universe.

Exactly. Doug was the quintessential maitre d'. He remembered everybody's name. I'm terrible with names. But Doug used to write me out a little cheat sheet — "Bob Johnson, table 14, he was in two weeks ago" — so I could go talk to the table. He appreciated elegance. And we wanted to be an elegant restaurant with great food and great service.

Restaurant guru Danny Meyer said, "Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel."

That's what we're trying to do. I think about Alex (Seidel, chef at Fruition), well, why is that place so good? Because they get it. Paul (Attardi, maitre d' at Fruition) is just that good.

Osteria Marco, which opened in Larimer Square last fall, was a departure for you. It's huge.

Opening that place changed me.

How so?

I've never been a jerk. I'm not a screamer. I've worked for screamers, and I swore that I'd never be one. But there are 65 or 70 employees there. I'm not going to lie, I don't know all the names of all the servers, much less all the cooks. Not having the connection with the people, it was so easy for me to say, "This isn't right! Why do you not know the ingredients on the pizzas?" It changed me. I even made the cooks at Mizuna replate something last Thursday. I don't think I've ever done that before.

Is the economy hitting you hard?

Both Mizuna and Luca are up 15 percent over last year. Osteria is cranking. People need entertainment, and dining is entertainment. We're putting on theater. That's one of the reasons we're only open five nights a week because I want the same crew every night. I didn't want to do seven nights, and Doug didn't want to do seven nights.

Doug still informs the decisions you make.

Yeah. He was my best friend, bar none. When my son Luca was born, he was the first person at the hospital. When Doug got killed, that was difficult.

What else have you changed over the years?

We've done 103 menu changes at Mizuna. About 82 of just wiping the slate clean, with the exception of the macaroni and cheese.

Besides your taste, what informs those changes?

The guys in the kitchen. They use the tasting menu to audition dishes that might make it to the menu. I'll make suggestions, like how about butter-braised fava beans instead of haricots verts, but they don't have to do it.

You trust them.

Yes. But you've worked here for free a couple of days before you get a job here. And if you do get the job and don't grow, if you can't hit perfect mid-rare on a veal tenderloin or a duck breast after two months, then you're not gonna work here anymore.

Brutal.

Yeah, but the systems are set up such that it's all here for you. Every day, I expect that if we need to, we can do a 10-course meal without repeating an ingredient.

Is that common, the 10-course customer?

It's not everyone.

Would you rather have a restaurant filled with that kind of customer?

I think we have great diners in Denver. But unfortunately those diners have been reduced to mediocrity because we have so much mediocrity in the city. I'm not bashing anyone, but (some chefs) don't know when a plate is finished. It's like, that was great, but did it need the wasabi kimchee on top of it? So people go to Cherry Creek Grill. And hey, Jacqueline and I eat there too. It's not mind-blowing, but I know what I'm going to get. Are they raising the bar? No. But it's consistent.

And cheaper.

I don't think it's that cheap.

What about your prices?

About 18 months ago we made a decision. We had a $31 entree, and people were telling me that you can't break $30 in Denver. But I thought, why not? Look at what Capital Grille charges for a steak. Or Elway's. Ours is better beef. But I like to think it doesn't matter what the price is, because what we're doing is worth it. Like morel mushrooms. When morels first come into season and they're $38 a pound, they're on our menu. I want to be the first to put them on. Three months a year you get to enjoy this beautiful mushroom. We don't care what they cost. We'll pay for it, and we'll charge for it.

As long as you're first.

I always want to be the first with everything.

Who's your competition? Yourself? A restaurant down the street?

Here's how I see it. I have 12 really talented chefs that work for me. But in my heart and soul, I know I can outcook them any day of the week. I could walk into all three restaurants and I could step on the line in any position, and I can do it better.

Do they believe that?

No.

Do you want them to?

There's a big part of me that wishes they would appreciate it.

Do you ever do it?

I worked the meat station here Friday and Saturday, and the meat station is the hardest station in all three restaurants. I'm 40 years old. I'm in great shape, but it's 105 degrees in that kitchen. It's hard. But I'm pretty good at what I do.

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